Operations

Your staff will assume it is about replacing them, and silence confirms it

An assistant is introduced to customers with a paragraph and to staff with nothing, and then the organisation is surprised that nobody updates the documents or forwards the escalations. The people whose work it touches have one question and will not ask it out loud. Answering it early and plainly is not a courtesy; it is the difference between a tool people use and a tool people route around.

Answer the unasked question first

Everyone wants to know whether this is the first step in reducing headcount, and nobody will ask. An announcement that does not address it is read as confirmation. If the answer is that no roles are changing, say that. If roles are changing, say that too, because the version people invent is always worse than the truth and arrives faster.

Be specific about what it will and will not do

"It handles routine enquiries" tells nobody anything. "It answers questions about opening hours, pricing and the returns process, and it hands everything else to you with the conversation attached" is a scope people can evaluate against their own day. Vagueness here is read as evasion, and the specific version is also the one that gets the scope corrected by someone who knows better.

Tell them what you need from them, and make it small

Staff cooperation is what keeps the thing accurate: telling you when an answer is wrong, saying which document is out of date, noticing a question it keeps failing. Ask for exactly that, make it one channel and thirty seconds, and acknowledge it when it happens. A correction that disappears into nothing is the last correction that person sends.

Say who decided, and let it be criticised

An assistant introduced by nobody in particular has no owner to complain to, so the complaints go sideways and arrive as non-cooperation. Name the person who decided, invite the objections early, and expect the first week of feedback to be the most useful configuration input you will get. The people who answer these questions all day know exactly where it will fail.

Frequently asked questions

What should staff be told before an assistant launches?
Whether roles are changing, specifically what the assistant will and will not answer, exactly what is needed from them, and who decided. Omitting the first is read as an answer, and it is read as the worst one.
Should the announcement address job security directly?
Yes. Everyone is thinking it, nobody will ask, and silence confirms the fear. Whatever the true answer is, it is better than the version people construct, and it arrives before the rumour rather than after it.
Why does staff cooperation matter so much?
Because they are the only people who will notice a wrong answer early. Keeping the material accurate depends on someone saying which document is stale, and that only happens if reporting it is easy and acknowledged.
What does the first week of staff feedback give you?
The most useful configuration input available anywhere. The people who answer these questions all day know which ones are dangerous, which are ambiguous and which the documents answer wrongly, and none of that is visible from a specification.
Which languages should the announcement be in?
Whichever your staff read. A workforce is frequently more mixed-language than the management writing to it, and an announcement about job security is the worst one to leave people parsing in a second language.

Get in touch

Leave your details and we will reply. You do not need a sales call to get an answer.